I have been fiddling around with some basic French bread using flour, water, yeast and salt.

Everything goes acording to plan and it bakes in the electric oven at 230 degrees and I have a water pan in the oven, plus spray with a bottle when dough is placed in the oven.

I have tried several different flours, temps (half at 230, then dropped to 190) and it looks great, rises ......... BUT ... the outside is like iron. What could be the problem?

Rossco

Dutchoven

01-10-2010 08:33 PM

Re: Teeth Breaker ...

Rossco
A bit more information. What size are the loaves and how long are they taking to bake? How are you shaping them, baguette or boule or other. Generally my first thought in regard to a very hard crust is too long a bake time at too low a temperature. Certainly lowering the temperature is a bad idea. 230C is about 450F and depending on the shape and weight it may be in the oven too long. A shorter hotter bake(relative to size)seems to give us the results we expect.
Hope this sheds a bit of light.
Best
Dutch

heliman

01-10-2010 08:40 PM

Re: Teeth Breaker ...

Thanks Dutch ...

Baguettes 2 x about 30 cm long x 6 cm wide.

Baked 20 mins / turned tray around - another 20 mins the other side. Yes 450 F (230 C) is where I started at (used IR gun to get the temp correct), before dropping it to 200 C.

What sort of time / temp should these be baked? They look really great but are quite heavy and the hard outer shell makes them almost inedible....

Rossco

Dutchoven

01-13-2010 08:51 PM

Re: Teeth Breaker ...

Rossco
When I said what size I should have said how much did they weigh. But, no matter. If they were baguette they definitely should have been baked hotter and shorter. 40 minutes is quite long. I realize these were not done in a WFO but our baguette generally bake in 8 to 12 minutes in the WFO. In the regular electric or gas I would say 20 minutes maybe but your baking temperature should be in the 525-550F range. As far as humidifying the oven I think in a standard oven a steam pan is your best bet rather than spraying. The oven is vented and the steam from the spray won't last long. So after such a long story and so slow getting back to you raise the oven temp and hopefully your bake time will be shorter and you may get the results you hope for.
Good luck and all the best!
Dutch

heliman

01-14-2010 06:45 AM

Re: Teeth Breaker ...

Thanks Dutch - I intend giving the french bread another go this weekend. More heat, less time .... hopefully better results...